8.  Following complaints from the National Union of Finishing Contractors (Syndicat national des entreprises de second œuvre) that large construction firms were engaging in certain illegal practices, France's central government authorities instructed the National Investigations Office to carry out a large-scale administrative investigation into the conduct of public-works contractors.
9.  In a memorandum dated 9 October 1985 the head of the National Investigations Office – a body attached to the Competition and Consumer Affairs Department, which on 5 November 1985 became the Department for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (“the DGCCRF”) – provided the officials responsible at inter-département level with details of the planned investigation into the conduct of roadworks contractors in local tendering procedures. Appended to the memorandum was a list of companies to be inspected, either at their head office or at local branch offices, in seventeen départements. The list included the three applicant companies.
10.  On 19 November 1985 inspectors from the DGCCRF carried out simultaneous raids on fifty-six companies without authorisation from the companies' management and seized several thousand documents. At a later date, on 15 October 1986, they conducted further inquiries with a view to obtaining statements.
11.  On each occasion the inspectors entered the applicant companies' premises under the provisions of Ordinance no. 45-1484 of 30 June 1945, which did not require any judicial authorisation. While carrying out the raids, the inspectors seized various documents containing evidence of unlawful agreements relating to certain contracts that did not appear in the list of contracts concerned by the investigation.
12.  On 14 November 1986, on the basis of those documents, the Minister for Economic Affairs, Finance and Privatisation asked the Competition Commission (which became the Competition Council after the entry into force of Ordinance no. 86-1243 of 1 December 1986) to investigate certain acts which, in his opinion, amounted to collusion between separate firms, artificial competition between firms belonging to one and the same group in local tendering procedures for roadworks contracts, and agreements restricting competition in the operation of mixing plants.
13.  On 30 July 1987 the Competition Council was additionally asked by the head of the DGCCRF to investigate acts of a similar nature. That request concerned fifty-five companies, including the applicant companies.
14.  In a decision of 25 October 1989, published in the Official Bulletin on Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (Bulletin officiel de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes – “the BOCCRF”), the Competition Council, finding evidence of practices outlawed by the ordinance of 30 June 1945 and the ordinance of 1 December 1986, fined the first applicant company 12,000,000 French francs (FRF), the second FRF 4,000,000 and the third FRF 6,000,000.
15.  In a judgment of 4 July 1990 published in the BOCCRF, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld all those penalties. The applicant companies appealed on points of law.
16.  In a judgment of 6 October 1992, likewise published in the BOCCRF, the Commercial Division of the Court of Cassation quashed the judgment of the Paris Court of Appeal, on the ground that its calculation of turnover and its assessment of the amount of the fines had had no basis in law. It remitted the case to the Paris Court of Appeal sitting with different judges.
17.  At the retrial in the Court of Appeal, the applicant companies contested the lawfulness of the searches and seizures carried out by the inspectors, without any judicial authorisation, under the 1945 ordinance. They relied on Article 8 of the Convention.
18.  On 8 April 1994 the head of the Competition and Planning Section of the DGCCRF submitted additional observations on behalf of the Minister for Economic Affairs, stating, inter alia:
“... I will consider two points concerning the investigation procedure ... :
(a)  The inspections carried out under the 1945 ordinance should have been judicially authorised in advance, in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights ...
(b)  Secondly, the seizures carried out by the DGCCRF officials went beyond the actual purpose of the inspections, in that documents not expressly referred to in the application for the investigation were taken from several companies' head offices.
... section 15 of Ordinance no. 45-1484 of 30 June 1945 is worded in very explicit terms, as it states that in the course of their investigations, inspectors may require the production of, and seize, documents of any kind that are likely to facilitate the accomplishment of their tasks, irrespective of whose hands the documents are in. The distinctive feature of this procedure was that, in contrast to the provisions now in force, which were introduced by section 48 of the ordinance of 1 December 1986, the inspections were not carried out under constant judicial supervision. In the absence of any provisions on the matter, it is hard to see what supervisory procedure should have been followed.
... it appears from the provisions of the 1945 ordinances that the inspectors were vested with powers of search and seizure which they exercised when carrying out their general task of obtaining evidence. The aforementioned section 15 must be interpreted in the light of section 16 of the same ordinance, by which inspectors were granted unrestricted access to premises ...”
19.  On 4 July 1994 the differently constituted Paris Court of Appeal held, inter alia:
“... the administrative investigation was carried out in accordance with section 15 of the aforementioned ordinance. By virtue of that provision, inspectors are authorised to require the production of, and to seize, documents of any kind that are likely to facilitate the accomplishment of their task, irrespective of whose hands the documents are in. They have a general right to inspect documents, reinforced by a power of seizure. Since no search took place in the course of the administrative investigation, the firms have no grounds for arguing that there has been interference with their private life or home in breach of Article 8 of the Convention ...”
20.  The Court of Appeal fined the first applicant company FRF 5,000,000, the second FRF 3,000,000 and the third FRF 6,000,000. The applicant companies again appealed on points of law.
21.  In a judgment of 4 June 1996 published in the BOCCRF, the Court of Cassation dismissed their appeal. In particular, it dismissed their complaint under Article 8 of the Convention, holding that “the administrative investigation ... [had] not give[n] rise to any searches or coercive measures”.